The Era of ‘Woke' Brand Activism Is Over

WIRED

3 hours ago

Jun 27, 2025 6:00 AM In the wake of Donald Trump's attacks on DEI and trans Americans, major corporations have pulled out of Pride and Juneteenth. Some are pushing ultra-nationalist messages instead. Parade participants march in the LA Pride Parade on Hollywood Blvd. on Sunday, June 8, 2025, in Los Angeles, CA. Photograph:In May 2019, Gillette released an ad on Facebook just in time for Pride month. It featured Samson Bonkeabantu Brown—a Black Toronto artist and trans man—learning how to shave for the first time.
'I went into my transition just wanting to be happy. I'm glad that I'm at the point where I'm able to shave,' Brown says in the video; later he's seen shaving as his dad smiles and encourages him from behind his shoulder.
'Don't be scared. Shaving is about being confident,' Brown's dad says, repeating, 'You are doing fine.'
The ad went viral, receiving national news coverage, industry awards, and praise from LGBT advocates. The Ellen Show tweeted that it was 'nothing short of incredible.'
Gillette was not alone in creating a buzzy ad about the LGBT community as a marketing strategy; in the past two decades, there's been a steady uptick in brands and corporations embracing Pride, a trend sometimes criticized as being superficial, or 'pinkwashing.' But, as someone who has worked in marketing for over a decade, if you felt like this Pride month was a lot quieter than years previous, you're not imagining it.
Five months into Donald Trump's second presidential term, his executive orders against DEI and LGBT rights have influenced an increasing number of high profile corporate brands to abandon marketing and programming that could be considered too progressive, forcing Pride and Juneteenth celebrations around the country to scale back. At the same time, there's been an influx of brands doubling down on nationalist messages in advertising, at least some of which appear to be tied to Trump's tariffs and fixation on American-made goods.
'I've heard stories of clients wiping out … references to old work or old programs to try to erase that trail online because they're afraid of getting attacked,' says Mark, a creative director and former chief creative officer of a top New York ad agency who did not want his real name used due to potential industry backlash and repercussions. Where there used to be 'a lot of activity and a lot of discussion about social justice issues,' he adds, there's now a 'void of silence.'
Welcome to the Trumpian era of anti-woke capitalism. Please check your pronouns at the door.
Advertising is one of America's most popular and potent forms of cultural messaging, and signs of Trump's 'anti-woke' cultural crusade are all over our TVs, on our Instagram feeds, and in our communities.
According to a poll from Gravity Research, 39 percent of corporations surveyed planned to reduce Pride Month initiatives in 2025, with none planning to increase their engagements. And World Pride, which was just held in Washington, DC, reportedly received only around 30 percent of its previously projected 3 million visitors.
Mastercard, which famously launched a monthlong omnichannel Pride campaign called 'Your True Self Is Priceless' in 2022 and, only a few years before, that developed the widely lauded 'True Name' initiative that championed the identities of transgender Americans, has failed to debut any Pride messaging so far this year. Instead, it quietly withdrew as a top-level sponsor of this year's New York City Pride, along with PepsiCo, Nissan, Citi, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Target, after receiving conservative backlash for its collections of Pride merchandise in years prior, released a scaled-back, beige-heavy line this year, which has been mocked relentlessly on TikTok.
'Mastercard is a long-standing supporter of the many communities our employees are part of, including the LGBTQIA+ community,' said Will O'Connor, Mastercard's senior vice president of communications for North America, in a statement. 'This year, we continue that commitment by proudly participating in the NYC Pride March and related events with a strong employee-led presence and a community engagement program designed to uplift and celebrate our workforce.'
In a statement to WIRED, a Citi spokesperson said, 'Our Citi Pride Inclusion Network is excited about sponsoring a range of Pride Month celebrations and participating in local marches around the globe, including in New York City where we will march in partnership with SAGE, one of our not-for-profit partner organizations.' Similarly, a Nissan spokesperson said the company remains 'committed to promoting an inclusive culture for employees, consumers, dealers and other key stakeholders.' PepsiCo and PricewaterhouseCoopers did not respond to WIRED's requests for comment.
Granted, corporations' commitment to LGBT rights, even at the peak of their Pride participation, has long been criticized by some as hypocritical, particularly when it comes to police marching in uniform and companies that profit off war; anger over the corporatization of Pride has sparked protests in multiple North American cities over the years. With the shift away from social justice messaging, 'it becomes pretty obvious that a lot of these things that brands, agencies, companies do are performative,' Mark says.
But it's not just Pride. For the first time since 2021, the Super Bowl, which Trump attended, did not stencil its 'End Racism' slogan onto the field in support of racial justice. Denver's Juneteenth Music Festival lost support from more than a dozen companies, causing the event to scale back from two days to one, an event organizer told the Associated Press.
According to David Reibstein, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, many brands and advertisers appear to have capitulated to Trump's sweeping anti-woke mandates out of fear of being viewed as anti-American.
'We're seeing, more from Mr. Trump, if you're not on board with [him], then you're against America. I think that's part of what he's communicating as American values,' says Reibstein.
Ever since Trump signed a series of executive orders in February calling for the elimination of DEI initiatives across both the federal government and private companies, corporate brands and advertisers have been faced with a tough ethical dilemma: Go MAGA or go moral and risk either conservative boycotts or political retribution.
Mark says brands have grown increasingly terrified to stand behind their once-progressive messaging. 'I saw an immediate shift in clients who wanted to not publicize work that they had done for different communities who are underrepresented and … specifically about the trans and LGBTQIA+ community,' he tells WIRED.
Some industry experts suggest the DEI panic from corporations predates Trump's second presidential win and began with the extreme right-wing backlash over Bud Light's 2023 partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. According to Matt Skallerud, president of LGBTQ+ marketing agency Pink Media, the Bud Light boycott—which reportedly cost the multinational beer company ​​Anheuser-Busch an estimated $1.4 billion in organic revenue—signaled the beginning of the end of corporate DEI policies in the United States. He says business for firms like his has been much quieter the past two years.
'With this kind of war on DEI, it's now a ghost town,' he says. 'A lot of companies [since then] have just decided to wait this out and just see where it's all gonna go … but sadly, like, four years from now,' says Skallerud.
Trump's expansive far-right agenda has also made an indelible impact on Hollywood. Warner Bros. Discovery, Amazon, Paramount Global, and Disney have all reportedly walked back their DEI policies following pressure from the Federal Trade Commission, Variety reported. This comes as TV ad spots and social media campaigns are increasingly emulating Trump's vision of a conservative American cultural ideal.
A few weeks ago, Stellantis (parent company of Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram) launched its 'America Made Us' campaign in honor of America250, the nonpartisan year-long celebration leading up to next year's 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The spot features a gritty manifesto about the nature of the American spirit—one rooted in freedom, revolution, and football—and a call to action for consumers to 'remember everything this country still stands for.' Ford recently released its ultra nationalist 'For America, From America' campaign, touting its record on creating domestic jobs. Another Ford ad, called 'If They Were Like Us,' calls out other car companies with statements like, 'if they were like us, they would have said no to the taxpayer bailout and added thousands of American jobs'—seemingly a reference to the 2008 financial crisis.
Similarly, the Secret Service debuted a first-of-its-kind promo video at the Super Bowl called 'A History of Protection' featuring footage of key milestones in American history which include JFK's inaugural's address, Ronald Reagan's 'Tear Down This Wall' speech, and the 2024 assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. Directed by Michael Bay, the spot concludes with a wide-angle shot of eight men walking dramatically toward the camera in front of Air Force One. The closing shot is notably absent of any female Secret Service agents, who along with DEI policies were blamed by many on the right for failing to adequately protect Trump from serious threats. As WIRED previously reported, the Department of Homeland Security has spent more than $500,000 on YouTube ads encouraging undocumented migrants to 'self-deport.'
Meanwhile, Coca-Cola, a brand with a history of diverse TV ads celebrating political counterculture, recently awarded Trump with an inaugural Presidential Commemorative Diet Coke.
Trump's anti-DEI mandates may have stymied corporate America's flimsy commitment to social justice, but his war against woke culture is particularly prominent on social media platforms.
Mark Zuckerberg's and Elon Musk's highly publicized presence at Trump's presidential inauguration marked the first time social media companies like Meta and X pandered publicly to an incoming president. Musk reportedly spent a whopping $288 million to Trump's reelection campaign, while Zuckerberg donated $1 million to seemingly curry Trump's favor. Facebook has abandoned fact checkers because they're 'too politically biased,' Zuckerberg has said, while X has become a force-fed stream of alt-right content, hate speech, and Trump merchandise. Several major corporations, including Comcast, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Lionsgate Entertainment have resumed spending their ad dollars on X after leaving in 2023 due to antisemitic content on the platform, Adweek reported.
But a number of big brands are publicly bucking Trump's fervent MAGA takeover of corporate America. Chief among them is Costco, perhaps the most famous example of a mega-retailer refusing to roll back its DEI initiatives, even in the face of massive political pressure.
Earlier this month, Walmart heiress Christy Walton was lauded by progressives for taking out a full-page ad in The New York Times to promote the anti-Trump 'No King's Day' protests nationwide. Walmart had faced public and investor scrutiny for its flip-flopping position on DEI but recently announced its shareholders had voted down anti-DEI proposals with a 99 percent majority vote.
Vermont-based Ben and Jerry's has famously called out corporate America for reneging on DEI, has protested the genocide in Gaza, and has spoken out about the climate crisis, joining other brands like ELF Cosmetics, Delta Airlines, Cisco, Levi's, Apple, Salesforce, JPMorgan, Microsoft, and Goldman Sachs in defying Trump's sweeping anti-woke attacks.
Reibstein says the onus is also on consumers to support brands 'willing to take a stand.'
'It makes it incumbent on customers to sort of follow not just their product needs, but also their political needs,' he says. 'For example, Costco [being] willing to take a stance, that has made me feel better.'
A call-to-action he coauthored after the November election argues that advertising agencies and marketers can heal our fractured political landscape through unifying messages and 'constructive dialogue over inflammatory content.'
If we don't, Reibstein tells WIRED, 'it's going to narrow our creativity and narrow our perspective because we can't look at things from various angles.'
So far, it looks like Trump's anti-woke measures are limiting the industry from thinking expansively enough to subvert the right-wing new world order currently emerging. But the MAGA threat facing advertising isn't just aesthetic, or even creative—it's existential.
Brands, whether we like them or not, help shape public consciousness by transmitting cultural attitudes and political tastes. Which is why brand CEOs, agency executives, and creative decision makers of all levels must start getting comfortable placing moral imperative over political deference; progressive ideals over short-term gain. Or the American imagination won't just turn MAGA. It will cease to exist at all.